Summer's Gone

The sun slices through the early morning mist at this time of year, straight up the valley from the east, right into my study.  On the last day of summer holidays - Ben and Dylan will both be in school tomorrow - it is going to be a perfect day, sunny at 28-degrees.  Everything is still green and lush, though the growth of the grass has slowed considerably, and the leaves are ready to make their colourful transition to the painted forest.

We've had a great summer: July spent here at home, a week traveling to Kamsack and Calgary, a week of interPLAY, and two weeks in Ontario.  In our travels we connected with 43 family members.  I counted, on our flight home last week, as I couldn't sleep and I needed something to do. I also listed the name of every single person that I could remember from Mindcamp, Canada's creativity conference, five days that closed out our Ontario excursions.  Remarkably, that number ended up around 75.

Meeting people and spending time with family are awesome, but the measure for me of a great holiday is experiencing the sensation that time is standing still and mentally disconnecting with the world back home.  As I look back, one week felt like two and two felt like four, so time did indeed slow down.  And while I had to deal with one or two things that came up back at home, I felt mentally present throughout our travels.  It was a great vacation.

I thought I'd do something different with this edition of the Wood Buffalo Update.  Rather than writing from memory, I'm going to use photographs as memory triggers and sharing whatever stories they inspire.  How does that sound?

SASKATCHEWAN SUNSET

We drove 1,300 kilometres on that first leg of our holiday, driving the northern route from Fort McMurray to Kamsack.  As we were getting close, a beautiful sunset was developing and I insisted we stop a couple of times so I could snap a few pictures.

Justifiably, Heather was getting tired of pulling over for me, so rather than asking a third time, I opened up the sunroof, carefully positioned my iPhone in the jet stream, holding tightly, and snapped a picture of the sky as the sun made its final descent.

I think it was worth it, don't you?  You can see the reflection on the roof of the car in the foreground.  Stunning!

KAMSACK TIMES

I leaf my way through the stack of local newspapers when I get home to Kamsack.  I have done it religiously going back to the mid-1980s when I returned for the first time from university in Saskatoon.

Mom and Dad are great about resisting the urge to toss the growing pile of yellowed newsprint in the garbage until both Doug and I have had a chance to go through them.

There were two items, apart from the one celebrating Dad's volunteer efforts in the community, that really jumped out to me.  One was the obituary for John Friday, a fellow who was quite a bully when we were little.  Playing football on the site that is now the RCMP detachment, likely in 1979 or 1980, he bullied us for the last time as I finally pushed back, and punched a few times.  Seeing that he is gone reminds me that he was somebody's son, brother, father and grandfather.  He was only 45.

The other was the obituary for Lawrence.  He was always around, from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, the local Mr. Fix-It who had every tool under the sun and the skill to fix or build pretty much anything.  A lifelong bachelor, Lawrence was always friendly, eternally helpful and a fixture in the community.  It seems surreal that he is gone, though he lived a good long life passing away at 84.

SMILES

It was so nice to see everyone, smiling, talking, reconnecting.  It was great to see Dad doing incredibly well.  Here are a few pictures that are worth sharing that capture brilliantly the spirit of the three days we spent in Kamsack.

Uncle Lloyd, Shelley and Aunty Lydia

Heather with Anwyn; Dylan and Henry; Ben, Anwyn and Kade; Sophia and Maggie, Dylan and Maggie

Malisa, Greg and Jana; Kade, Dylan and Doug; Kim and Keith; Doug, Mom, Kade and Dad

WAGNER REUNION

We have established a summer tradition with the Wagner side of the family that we convene in a new location each year.  As Michael and Kathryn had recently made a big move to Calgary and in respect of the latter being great with child, we decided to use their home as a base of operation for a number of outings in the area.  High flying fun at Calaway Park, fishing on the Bow, playing games and exploring the Glenbow Museum were some of the highlights of our few days in Cowtown.

Julia loved the day at Calaway Park. I enjoyed the fishing in the trout pond.

Games are often in progress, especially between Dylan and Grandma Wager as they often engage in long checkers battles

I can't say enough our our Bow River fly fishing adventure

Ben, Michael, Julia, Susan, Dylan, Neil and Heather outside the Glenbow in downtown Calgary

We got to see the Escher exhibit at the Glenbow, absolutely a highlight

We always enjoy our time during the Wagner reunion, wherever we happen to be, but this year especially so.  Michael and Kathryn's new home is so comfortable and roomy.  I was also delighted to have caught my first fish using a fly rod.  

A Little Piece of Paradise

After traveling across the country, renting a car and braving the 401, there was no better place we could have been than Marcel and Kathy's "farm" near Guelph.  I call it a "farm", though there is only one animal - a lovely dog named Boda - a garden and several fruit trees.  The only other way to describe this place is "a little piece of paradise", which Heather beautifully wrote about in a recent blog post that you can read here.

From the wonderful art on the walls to the conversation-rich gatherings around the long dining table, from the mysterious forest to the refreshing swimming hole, the "farm" is a place of tranquility, connectivity, and abundance.

We were grateful to have spent several days there before heading into Guelph to enjoy Pierre and Robbie's hospitality.  Their new home is gorgeous, with a striking view out the back and lots of room for company.  We had a great gang of us on one night, including Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty.

After telling everyone about my visit to Maryann and JP's dairy farm last fall, the gang was eager to visit for themselves.  We took a drive one afternoon and enjoyed an awesome tour of this beautiful facility and parlour-side seats for the 5 pm milking.  It was awesome.

I took a lot of pictures during the wonderful Guelph portion of our trip.  Here are a few of our favourites.

Heather with baby Juliana and her Aunty Emilie

The boys playing around in Fergus

The beautiful ladies: Heather and Kathy

Cool dudes: Pierre and Dylan

The musician: Erica

We enjoyed several great visits with Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty

Robbie and Pierre are always so full of life

Maryann and Joseph Patrick gave us an awesome tour of their dairy farm

TRENTON TIMES

We departed from Guelph, choosing to take the road less traveled, or, at least the one we thought would be so.  Highway 2 runs parallel to the much faster and busier 401, cutting through towns and cities with names like Whitby, Oshawa, Bowmanville, Port Hope and Cobourg.  And no sooner had one place ended another began, towns sitting kiss to kiss, with nary a field between them.  

Chris and Corinne moved to Trenton shortly after the last time we were in Ontario as a family.  And while we don't see them often enough, we sure enjoy our time with them when we do.

They asked what kinds of things we wanted to do when we were there.  We were very explicit that we were quite happy just hanging out and discovering their little community and area.  So, that's exactly what we did.  On one day, we went for a mini-wine tour, through Prince Edward County, tasting some of the local vintages and shopping in some of the out-of-the-way galleries and stores.  

On another day, we discovered the beauty of Lake Ontario, spending time on the beach at Presqu'ile Provincial Park.  I'm still struck by how beautiful it was and how few people were there.  Who needs to go to Mexico when you have a beach like that in your backyard.

Sometimes, everything you need to have an unforgettable time is within your reach.  One evening, Corinne started bringing out her collection of musical instruments: trumpet, saxophone, recorders, cantor (for the pipes), guitar, and pan flute.  We all got into the act, with Ben loving every minute of being surrounded by musical things.

Jonathan, Matthew and Thomas have all grown up since we last saw them.  Matthew is so tall he can touch the sky.  

Jonathan and Dylan ended up finding lots to talk about, as did the two sets of parents - no stone was left unturned by the time we packed up and darted off to our final stop at Mindcamp.  But that's a whole other story that would cause this edition of the Wood Buffalo Update to go on forever.  

As you can see, it was a full summer of travel and fun.  We've logged a lot of miles, but it was worth it to see people that we dearly love, people we don't see often enough.  I hope you've enjoyed looking at the pictures and getting a wee sense of our holiday adventures.

Summer breezes

I had no sense that I would spend some time with the Wood Buffalo Update this morning, but after having a few sips of coffee and shaking myself from my longer-than-normal slumber, something niggled at me that it was time.  Sure enough, it has been almost two months since I last checked in, mere days before the news conference that announced my significant professional shift.

I'm a little sleepy for two reasons: first, because it is a cooler morning with a lulling soft rain, and second, because I spent many hours on Christina Lake yesterday, sucking in fresh air and life.  By the time we got home I was pooped.  Out on a boat for about five hours, I caught 14 fish, several of which were nice sized walleye.  It was outstanding.

The move into the role of interim executive director of the Arts Council was announced on May 15th and happened just a few days later.  As my focus on the arts had begun almost a full year before that, it really wasn't a jarring change, outside of the technology adjustment from the Microsoft to Apple environment.  I'm still working out of the same office in the Arts Centre of the college, surrounded by familiar people and things.

Where we are heading is much clearer to me now after spending a full day with the Edmonton Arts Council and crafting a business plan for 2014.  Assuming our funding request goes through, we would quickly jump from a party of one to a bustling organization of four in year one, six in year two.  We would be managing the municipality's public art program, doling out arts grants, and advocating on behalf of the sector.

Based on my understanding of the relationship between the Arts Council and my political duties, my guess would be that I would be running for re-election in October.  I haven't made that final decision or announcement yet, but the last three years have been fantastic and the opportunity to serve for an additional four is one that I'd like to seize (we are moving from 3-year to 4-year terms in Alberta), if I can avoid conflict of interest.  The fact is that I might need to seek some legal counsel before making that final call.  In any event, I'm protected completely right now because I am on a secondment until the end of May in 2014 thanks to Keyano College.  They have "given me over" to the Arts Council, covering all of my wages, benefits, etc.

The day before my 46th birthday, I saw on Twitter that a flood watch had been issued for the Hangingstone River in Fort McMurray.  I immediately jumped into my car and went to the end of the street where this normally tranquil stream cuts through town, adjacent to Heritage Park.  Tranquil had turned terrifying as almost 100 mm of rain that had fallen in the watershed had filled the Hangingstone to historic levels.  As I was standing there, the edge of the water was already creeping up the sidewalk.  To my right, a group of school kids were on a tour of the park, oblivious to what was happening.

By early the following morning, I almost couldn't process the pictures I was seeing, particularly of the Sport & Wellness Centre at Keyano College, the main floor of which was covered in a foot or two of water.  Heritage Park was a lake and several neighbourhoods were put on alert to evacuate.  We declared a state of local emergency - the first of many to come in Alberta over the next few weeks - and put our EOC (Emergency Operations Centre) to its second highest level of activation, something that had never happened before.

I was preparing to go to a weekend conference in Banff when news of the flooding in southern Alberta began to hit the following week.  Organizers made the decision to move the gathering to downtown Calgary which proved to be its death knell as Cowtown ended up being in the path of the largest flow of water in the province's history.  By the next morning, the largest city in Alberta looked eerily like New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  High River to the south was an unmitigated disaster zone. Our flood seemed inconsequential as images of the devastation began to dominate the news.

Life carried on, and clean-up efforts and restoration are in full swing here in Fort McMurray and throughout the southern half of Alberta.  At the College, the new and improved Sport and Wellness Centre will reopen in early September in time for the start of the fall semester.  The Calgary Saddledome, flooded up to row 10 according to some reports, will take a little longer to restore, but it will come back, as will High River and other places ravaged by water.

The end of the school year heralded strong efforts by both Dylan and Ben.  It marked a watershed moment for their educational journeys as they will be in different schools for the first time this fall.  Dylan will be bussing to the other end of town to attend Holy Trinity High School.  Both had great report cards and Dylan was acknowledged with a Citizenship Award for the leadership role he played at Dr. Clark School.  We were very proud of both boys for their efforts.

Dylan is really finding his voice outside of school as well, enjoying strengthening connections made during the Hometown...The Musical! process.  He was recently invited to participate in a video podcast called Gamer Girls vs Gamer Guys.  His depth of knowledge about video gaming was evident in his first appearance on the show.

His adult co-host Ashley shared that "Dylan was incredible. Honestly, we were a bit worried about how having kids on front of a camera would go, but as soon as Dylan came in and started chatting with us we knew he would be perfect for it. And he nailed it!"

Ben spends his time making music and designing incredible things on Minecraft and wherever his travels take him.  He's excited to be going on a solo trip to Calgary later this month to spend a few days with his Uncle Michael, Auntie Kathryn and cousin Julia.  It's a bit of a challenge keeping him busy during these long summer days, but a complete re-design and re-painting of his bedroom should keep him occupied.

Heather is out the door early this morning, teaching a yoga class for 20 at the Higher Health studio.  She has earned a top reputation in Fort McMurray and is a lucrative catch for any studio that taps into her skills.  She continues exploring writing and has begun to share her creations and explorations on her blog site: http://heathersheartrevealed.blogspot.ca/.

We have begun a daily practise that is proving to be healthy for our bodies and our relationship.  Each evening we go off for a 30-45 minute walk.  Rain and shine, it has been an excellent way to get our bodies moving and a great opportunity to talk.

Our summer holidays will find us traveling to Kamsack toward the end of July, then swinging south and west to Calgary for our annual reunion with the Wagners.  Home for a week, we then hop a plane to Ontario where we will spend a couple of weeks visiting in the Trenton and Guelph areas, finishing off at YMCA Geneva Park near Orillia for Mindcamp.

We hope you have a great summer!

Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, love gets showered on ladies young and old, who have created, nurtured and sustained life - incredible women who soothe, encourage, scold, support.  I hope you all have a beautiful day. You deserve it.

Uncle Joe, an ardent reader of the Wood Buffalo Update, is probably ready to send out carrier pigeons in search of this post.  Unfortunately, the confluence of circumstance and timing has thwarted my best intentions. With a free and clear Sunday and the arrival of Mother's Day, I finally have the time, inspiration and impetus to sit down and bring you into our world, if only for a few minutes.

This was a week.  The things I've been blessed to do - and not do - in the last seven days make me shake my head in amazement.  As Heather was away for most of it, attending a spirituality retreat in the Canmore/Banff area, and as my calendar was packed every single night, I had to find something to drop to spend at least one full evening with Dylan and Ben, who are graciously independent when we need them to be.  When the least important thing I had to give up were two VIP tickets to see Bill Cosby, you can begin to get an appreciation for the week that has just floated to an end.

A week ago, I had the honour of being in Edmonton for a couple of arts presentations, including Catalyst Theatre's The Soul Collector - which is outstanding by the way, and a panel interview for the Premier's Council on Culture.  This will be a government committee of about 20 individuals that will report directly to the Minister of Culture.  I'll find out in June if I was successful or not, though I feel incredibly good about my chances.

My good friend and MLA Don Scott was treating me to lunch before the grilling, when former Minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education and current MLA Stephen Khan walked into the restaurant.  He came right over, asked what I was doing in town - we had met several times previously and discovered a natural kinship - and pledged to put an encouraging word (or two) in the Minister of Culture's ear.

As I am like to do these days, I spent several hours in preparation for the panel interview, synthesizing the job description and the role of the Council into a series of pictures, arrows, boxes and words - a mind map.  I had two pages in front of me as they peppered me with their standard set of questions.  They couldn't help noticing my reference notes and went off script to ask about them.  It was an excellent experience, and I got the sense that I might have been better prepared than the average candidate they had interviewed to that point.

A Council meeting back home that burned the midnight oil, a two-day think tank called the Nexus North IDEAS lab, the screening of an award-winning documentary film, and a fundraiser for our athletics program with NHL greats like Mark Messier, Theo Fleury and Glenn Anderson rounded out the week.

There were many highlights, but getting to host a panel discussion after the red carpet screening of Oil Sands Karaoke stands out as something special. Filmed in and around Fort McMurray in the summer and fall of 2012, the film follows the lives of five people who work in the oil sands and their off-hours lives as talented karaoke singers.  It might seem like an unlikely premise for a documentary film, but it works.  In fact, it earned the distinction of being the most entertaining entry at the recent Hot Docs festival in Toronto, the preeminent documentary film festival in the world.

 I was joined on stage by Mayor Blake, Iceis Rain - the drag queen alter-ego of Aboriginal entrepreneur Massey Whiteknife, one of the stars of the movie, and Charles Wilkinson - the director of Oil Sands Karaoke.  It was an amazing opportunity to lead a fascinating discussion.  The comments when I was done were encouraging and effusive, a preview of a comment that would blow me away the following morning.

The moment I saw Alex Jadad at the Nexus North gather on Thursday, I felt an uncanny connection, but it was illusory - I couldn't pin it down, though I had a intuitive sense we had met before, whether in this life or another (if you believe in that kind of thing).  It turns out I wasn't alone.  Alex (short for Alejandro, an accomplished innovator from Toronto, originally from Columbia) was intent on seeking me out, as he had a similar sense of connection.  He also wanted to express appreciation for the movie and panel discussion the night before.

"The movie was brilliant," he began, "but your performance was even more so.  It was a thing of beauty to watch how how balanced the discussion. It was wonderful."

It is a little awkward and embarrassed sharing the comment, as it feels rather self-serving, but the way he said it, equally imbued with both sincerity and awe, blew me away.  In a way, it reinforced the feeling I have that I'm in exactly the right place at the right time doing the exact things that I'm meant to be doing.  That's an intoxicating sensation, one worth sharing, despite the discomfort.

Heather is in a similar place right now, intoxicated with the notion that she is living her passions and finding her voice.  She has recently re-discovered a love of writing that has brought her into the blogosphere. Her level of intuition, spiritual connectivity, and impact on people has never been greater - at least from my perspective.

Watching her soar is a thing of beauty!

She and Dylan went for the final screening of Oil Sands Karaoke last night while Ben and I darted for the bank of the Athabasca River so I could get my hooks in the water for the first time this season.  We had to traverse iceberg-like chunks of ice to get down to the water's edge - a scenario I have never seen before, at least not this late in the spring.  I gingerly climbed down to the bottom, carrying all of my gear, doing my best not to slip and fall into the water.  I placed my tackle box up on an ice shelf, put on my rig, skewered my minnows, and tossed the line out into the water.  Not a minute later, a large chunk of ice, probably 100 pounds, calved off from above and came crashing down, narrowly missing me but propelling my tackle box and all its content into the water and into my chest.  Momentarily stunned at the near miss, I looked down to see multiple spoons and jigs hanging off my shirt.  It was an amusing moment, but a sharp suggestion that I should probably wait until the ice melts away before giving fishing another shot.

As Dylan progresses toward the end of Grade 8, consistently coming home with reports of successful tests and projects, he will soon have to decide where to attend high school in the fall.  His heart seems set on a school that offers the opportunity to get involved in the theatre arts.  My sense is that it will either be Holy Trinity or Westwood, both facilities at the other end of the town with well over 1000 students each.

I am happy to report that I am no longer at a professional crossroads in my life.  The die has been cast, the road chosen, and very soon I will be able to speak publicly about the next step in my career.  An announcement and press conference is set for Wednesday morning, after which I will be able to share the news.  I am very excited about the opportunity that I have accepted and the challenge I have undertaken, as it aligns with my passions and my experiences.  It also addressed a pledge I made to myself in January 2012 as to how I was going to change the world.  Stay tuned!

March of spring

I went to bed last night knowing two things.  First, that the time was going to spring forward at 2 am, robbing us of a full 60 minutes of repose.  I have a psychological remedy for that which seems to work well.  I change the clock in our bedroom as we go to sleep and drift into a state of acceptance that I've just gone to bed later than expected.  The second thing I knew just as surely was that it was probably time to write another Wood Buffalo Update.  As it turned out when I checked this morning, it was exactly one month ago that I touched based, so my instincts were bang on.

Nine performances and 4,300 audience members later, Hometown...The Musical! came to an end two weeks ago tonight.  It took me most of that time to get my wind back; it was both an exhilarating and exhausting ride.  The feedback we received made it more than worthwhile though, as the show inspired a response unlike any other.

We had multiple requests for encore performances, a complete anomaly in my experience.  Unfortunately, we couldn't accommodate the desire for additional shows as the set was struck the day after we closed and the stage manager was on a plane to Hawaii for a much-deserved vacation.

I wrote about the experience, from start to finish - 27 blog posts in total stretching from December 9, 2012 to February 23, 2013.

"As you all know, I've been writing about this incredible journey since we began," I said to the cast before the final performance.  "I wrote my final post last night.  I'm going to leave the last word to you."

Giving the cast, crew and artistic team the opportunity to share their reflections on the process proved to be quite a success.  I had over 40 submissions in the several days that followed, posted in Journey to Hometown, Epilogue.  If you ever doubt that what we do in the arts matters, spend a few minutes reading the authentic perspectives of people who were willing to share what this production meant to them, many of whom had never been on stage before.

Dylan joined us during the technical and production portion of this show, running the follow spot up in the lighting booth.  He survived and thrived on late nights and early mornings on weekends, diligently staying on task and being an integral member of the team.  Being the social character that he is, many new friends were made and he fit right in.  As he first made his presence known in the theatre back when he knocked on the door a full six weeks early in 1999 when I was performing in The Taming of the Shrew, it felt like a homecoming of sorts.

Ben and Heather came to opening night along with a whole bunch of other people - we ended up selling out every public evening performance and one matinee.  Hometown...The Musical! ended up being the 5th most attended production in our 33-year history - quite an achievement for a brand new work that was truly a community collective creation.

I had sent Mom a picture of what I looked like during the early portion of the run - we ended up dropping this facial prosthetic as it was cumbersome to apply and take off, it also failed to achieve the desired affect.  As Dad refuses to look at the computer, Mom decided to print off this picture and show it to him, without any explanation.

"Is it the Pope?" he asked.

I had a great laugh with Mom over the phone about that one!

While we were focused on getting through the musical, my esteemed Councillor colleague Phil Meagher was preparing for his historic ski from Fort Chipewyan to Fort McMurray, a distance of 280 kilometres.  He took off at first light the morning of our final day of Hometown performances.  When I woke up the following morning, he had traveled several hundred kilometres and was running into some difficulty.  First, the temperature started to flirt with zero, then there was an increasing amount of sand on the road.  The amazing progress he was able to make early on in the trip had given way to almost no progress at all.  At about the 220 km mark he began to experience breathing issues and eventually had to acquiesce to the fact that he needed medical attention.  He was airlifted to the hospital where it was determined that he had come down with a case of pneumonia.

After two weeks of recovery, he successfully finished the final 60 kms on Friday, gliding into Fort McMurray shortly after dinner.  The final leg ended up taking 9 hours, 40 minutes.  Ben and I, along with several supporters from the Centre of Hope, a homeless facility for which he was raising money, were there to welcome him and capture the moment.

"And now you're going to go ref a hockey game?" asked someone.

"Yah, but that's not till 9:15.  No problem there," he said.

It was an incredible feat of human endurance that would have knocked most people to the floor, and this 50+ fellow with an artificial hip was going to go pack up his ski gear and lace on his skates.  Amazing!

It's taken me the better part of two weeks to fully recover from the play.  This has been one of those rare winters when I haven't take holidays or gone on a trip.  Normally, this is the weekend when I'd be traveling to the NCMPR National Conference, this year taking place in Chicago.  However, with my professional focus having been on the arts the past six months, I didn't feel right about going.  We also typically travel to a tropical destination in the first quarter of the year, but this year we did not.  Instead, we sent Heather down to Sedona, AZ for a retreat and to Bellingham, WA for a craniosacral treatment.  With the significant time commitment required for Hometown, it was the right choice to stay close to home.

I did manage to fly out of town this past week, down to Edmonton at the invitation of MLA Don Scott for the Budget announcement at the Legislature.  It was my first time visiting those hallowed halls and seeing the process of provincial governance from up close.  Though in a foreign place, I still felt somewhat at home as so many faces were familiar.  Being in municipal government for almost 30 months now, I've had occasion to meet many of the ministers and members who make up this prestigious body.

It might be somewhat counter intuitive, but we are mired in austere times in the province of Alberta, and Finance Minister Horner delivered a speech that confirmed as much.  And while he did his best to sprinkle the message with flowery phrases, words of optimism and fiscal resolve, buried behind the words are numbers that are coated with the effluent of the so-called bitumen bubble,  the price differential that has decimated our revenue stream from the oil sands sector.

While we wait for the sun to do its work on the remaining snow and usher in long-awaited spring, public sector organizations, nonprofits, and myriad other groups are going to have to make it through a messy melt before we can wrap ourselves in summer's embrace.  I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I can't wait.

Hometown...The Musical!

Dylan and I will be pulling an 11-hour day today as we make our way to rehearsal just after lunch.  He is on the technical crew, volunteering as the follow-spot operator, while I am on stage playing Grandpa George in Hometown...The Musical!, the story our community, and this place we call home.

I have been neck deep in practices since we returned from Christmas holidays which explains the absence of a Wood Buffalo Update.  Time is precious when burning both ends of the candle.

"I'm living my life in 15-minute increments," I said to someone the other day.  Fifteen minutes to get home from work, 15 minutes for a bath, 15 minutes for dinner, and 15 minutes to get back to the theatre.  If I can eek out an extra 15 minutes for a nap - bonus!  It's a grind, but I'm not going through it alone.

When we open the show on Friday, 122 performers - including Mayor Melissa Blake who will be making a cameo appearance - will be featured on the stage, the majority of which will be live and in person.  A small group of about 10 - including our neighbor Norm Sutton - are featured in video vignettes that are played while my character tells stories.

All of us are tired as we head into the final stretch, many struggling with this lingering cold that has punctuated the winter of 2013.  I am on Week 6 of dealing with massive congestion.  The 30  GDS (Generation Dance Studio) dancers, ranging in age from 8 to 17, have not only been pulling down a grueling rehearsal schedule for the musical, they were also spending all their days off from Hometown preparing for a dance showcase.  Almost to a girl, they excel at school, carving out time to complete their homework while being shuttled back and forth by their parents and during breaks at school.  They have been a delight to work with as have dozens of newcomers to the acting process.  This has really been a community endeavor.

My brother Greg, who is very active in community theatre back in Kamsack, will fully appreciate how frenetic things are on stage and off, as over 100 bodies come and go.  If you thought Fort McMurray traffic was bad, imagine what happens backstage when this energized group tries to move about in the dark.  Fun times!

For Dylan, this experience is super important, as he gets to work with a team mixed with professionals and volunteers.  From my vantage point on the stage, waiting to move forward in the cue-to-cue process, I can see him in the lighting booth at the back of the 600-seat theatre, perched on a stool watching carefully and listening for his next cue in the headphones he wears to keep connected to what's happening down below.

Claude, Tiffany and Madeleine have been here for several weeks, guests in our home while Hometown comes together, but so familiar and comfortable that they are like members of our family.  Claude is co-directing the show, Tiffany is doing the costumes, and Madeleine is making her youthful stage debut as an actual bundle of joy in a flashback sequence.

With Heather and Ben's support and indulgence we pull through, basking in the rare hours when nothing is on the schedule, catching up on household tasks and rest.

Last week, we were Heather-less as she traveled to Bellingham, Washington for a special craniosacral treatment from one of the leaders in the field.  She was inspired, excited and re-energized by the sessions and came home in excellent spirits.

While we've been rehearsing, the snow has been falling.  Long-time residents say they don't recall having had this much snow in decades.  We don't mind, as it seems to diffuse the doldrums that are inherent with the long nights and short days. It also means that the risk of forest fires in the spring will be somewhat dampened as all this white stuff melts away and settles into the muskeg.

I will be submitting my application to serve on the Premier's Council on Culture in the coming days.  As part of the process, I asked for letters of support from Mayor Blake, David Whitelock - Executive Director of Events Wood Buffalo, and Cindy Amerongen - my awesome boss at the college.  Reading the personal perspectives of three respected colleagues and friends about the role that I have played in the area of arts and culture in this community was both humbling and uplifting.  Cross your fingers for me, as this is outstanding opportunity.

In my professional life, it feels like progress is being made, energy and enthusiasm are building around the arts, and the future is incredibly bright.

If you're interested in a behind-the-scenes account of Hometown...The Musical!, I've written 19 articles (so far) about the process at www.middleagebulge.com.

Have a terrific day!

Holiday Hello 2012

Happy Holidays to one and all.  One of our favourite traditions is putting together our annual Holiday Hello, a picture-laden newsletter.  It is one of the ways we are able to keep in touch with family and friends from Trenton to Nanaimo, from New York City to the Crowsnest Pass.

When you click on the picture below, it will take you the 2012 edition.  We hope you enjoy it.

December Descending

I started trying to write one of my regular blogs this morning, but something made me stop.  The words weren't coming, the inspiration just not there.  After a couple of cups of coffee it hit me as to why. It was time to do another Wood Buffalo Update, time to gather up the dust bunnies of memory and share them before they are gone.

The final week of November proved that Winter has a mighty grip on us, dishing up temperatures that flirted with -30.  I was in Fort Chipewyan on Wednesday evening, an hour flight north of Fort McMurray, attending a community engagement event.  The municipality had chartered a plane to take a group of us up there as it is more cost effective than flying commercial.

I had a wonderful time connecting with old friends and making some new ones.  It was especially great to have a visit with Nadia's Auntie Rachel who I hadn't seen in a number of years.  An old-time country band warmed up the hall filled with about 200 residents and made the evening merry.

While we enjoyed the event, the pilots caught up on their emails and reading in the small airport terminal while the plane sat on the tarmac.

"It's going to be rather cold when we first get in the plane," the pilot warned as we prepared to head back home.  "We'll do our best to get it warmed up as fast as we can."

We sat in our seats, left for about four hours to absorb the bitter cold that had descended on Alberta's oldest continuously inhabited settlement, bundled up in our toques, mittens and parkas.  At that point, it was -34 with a windchill.  We shivered, our exhalations clearly visible in the cabin as the crew turned the ignition to begin the warming up process.

There is something romantic, in a northern adventure kind of way, of being able to experience this frontier-like mode of transportation.  I don't get up to Fort Chipewyan often, but when I do, it reminds me of the vastness of our region, and the importance of our rural communities.

It's not quite that cold this morning, only -20 according to the Weather Channel.  We had more snow last night, so it will mean another round of shoveling for me, which will make Ben enormously happy.  He's been building a fort at the end of our driveway, in the spot that always ends up being the biggest pile in the yard.

I came home from work one day and saw this beautiful tunnel burrowed out, thinking immediately that Heather had been out doing the work.  It turns out that the tunneling was all Ben, demonstrating an acuity passed down from his Uncle Keith.

In my new role (since the summer) of focusing on the arts at Keyano, we have ended up spending a lot more time attending  special events at the Theatre & Arts Centre.  Mom gifted us a couple of tickets to see Stuart McLean when he was in town in October.  We brought Neil, Susan, Dylan and Ben with us and enjoyed an amazing evening of stories and music.  Thanks Mom!

"We've been coming here a lot lately," said Dylan, as we crossed the snowy parking lot to go watch a short one-act play a few weeks ago.  "I like it."

Most recently, we all went to the opening night of Calendar Girls, a play about a group of Yorkshire women who decide to do a tastefully nude calendar to raise money to buy a new sofa for the cancer ward at their local hospital.  They chose to overcome significant body image issues and in so doing become global sensations.

Our local ladies became sensations of their own, doffing it all on stage, with strategically placed objects to hide their bits and pieces.  They were brilliant, and the audience response was stunning.

I did the pre-show speech for the final two performances, encouraging patrons to purchase one of the fundraising calendars that had been done featuring the ladies.  Some of you might find one under your tree come Christmas morning, so be prepared!

Dylan and Ben both came home with very positive report cards, Dylan crossing the finish line with an impressive 80 average for the first time.  We were both very proud of their efforts and Heather reported that all the teachers had lovely things to say.

Speaking of Heather, her health has been a little up and down in recent months, as she continues to work with a variety of practitioners to figure out what's happening.  She has radically adjusted her workload, listening very closely to what her body is telling her.   Some days she is full of vim and vigor, other days, less so.

We haven't been terribly specific about our Christmas plans, as we haven't firmed anything up yet.  At this point, we're thinking of maybe traveling down to Edmonton at some point.  We'll see what happens.  After the spate of accidents we've heard about this winter, the less time we spend on the roads, the better.

Have a great week.